The Antipollution Index

Welcome friends! Since the last 60 years, more specifically after the publication of the Rachel Carson’s best seller, Silent Spring in 1962 and the famous 22nd April of 1970 street rally in the USA in which millions of Americans have participated and which lead to an annual celebration of Earth Day on the same day later, the Administration and policymakers around the world along with common people got really conscious about what really we are heading towards. Infact the above mentioned two events are the just exactly which one may call the formation of Antipollution sensitivity in our minds exploding.

Well we now have many complex parameters or tools to measure pollution and the Pollution Standard Index or PSI is just one such terminology what the common man would never be interested for sure to know what it is and how it is measured?Well, I have not started this writing to tell you about that or other environmental jargon but for whom who are interested the, PSI is a tool to measure air pollution based on the equivalent concentrations of some major air pollutants, e.g Particulate matter, Carbon monoxide, Sulphur di Oxide….etc…. Oh! are you being bored? Obviously you would have every chance of being so as who am I to lecture this on at the time of Google and Wiki. After all these are all finger tips (or should I say simple browsing away). No I do not have any intention to write another online Encyclopedia! But have I coined some thing just now? Yes I did. Infact it is the the title of this topic, The Antipollution Index. What is this? Another clever new jargon?

No not at all. Atleast for now, as long as this write up is not uploaded in the internet any google attempt regarding this term will lead you to the airpollution search results. No organisation in this world use this phrase. In simple term there is nothing in this world called the Antipollution Index. Then, What is this?

What really was the fallout of the 22nd April 1970’s environmental rally in the streets of USA. That were astronomical in proportions. With in years we had the Clean Air Act, the USEPA or United States Environment Protection Agency was formed and Environment in USA had become a main stream issue. In 5th June 1972, we had the first Global summit on Environment, the UN organised conference on Human Environment in Stockholm on Sweden. Later on from 1974 we celebrate 5th June as World Environment Day. There are two more path breaking fall outs, in 1987, we had got a new terminology, called Sustainable Development, it was been coined in an official report which has been tabled in UN. And it is called “Our Common Future- Report of the first Global Commission on Environment”. Few years after the world did again meet at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil this time for the UN Conference on Environment and Development ( just 20 years after UNCHE at stockholm). The Montreal Protocol,1987, for banning of Ozone depleting substances, Kyoto Protokol, 1997 to arrest Carbon emission all happened. And we did find some hope. In 2015 we signed Paris agreement on Climate Change which is arguably our last hope to save the Earth.

But the hope it seems now is still just a hope. No I am not going to tell you again how the business interests of the north lead by the USA had hijacked the world platforms and how the crony capitalists accross the world are finding avenues to curtail the progress we made in having a cleaner, greener or safer world, away from the menace of Climate Change. Yes all these are true. But the real truth is the Antipollution sensitivity in our mind, the common people of this world, this country, have not exploded much, it has not been exploded in to a structured sensitivity of demand form which I call the Antipollution Index.

The antipollution index is a psychological tolerance or intolerance level beyond which our boundaries of geo-socio- eco-political zones deciphered. It is an ethical boundary like anti apertheid, antirape, antigenocide, antidiscrimination, antiracial solidaridy which we fail to reach or collectively disapprove. We collectively failed to appove plastic pollution, air pollution, water, soil, food and marine pollution, cutting down forests, cutting trees, plundering biodiversity and climate change is as heinousness as terrorism, genocide, apertheid, fundamentalism and rape. We fail to develop and figure out the Antipollution Indexes in our mind.

Environment is more an Ethical Issue and unless we appreciate that and put out collective effort to address the same psychlogically, there is little hope for this planet.